1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a method for acquiring data regarding use of an application on an information processing device, and more particularly to a method and a device for acquiring data regarding use of an application on an information processing device such as a computer, in which the method is applicable to research on an application usage trend, a measurement of an effect of Internet media, an advertising media value evaluation, and the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, network services such as a WWW service and an electronic mail service have become popular even with in ordinary households. In connection with this, personal computers with a communication facility have become widespread, and integration of a computer and a household electric appliance, for example, a television with a communication facility, is progressing.
Conventionally, in an network communication service using a server-client method in which an information server provides the service according to a request from an information terminal, if usage information of the service is necessary, the information server keeps a log of the information. Specifically, every time the information terminal sends a request for a service to the information server, the information server makes a record of the usage information such as a description of the service, user information, time, and the like.
On the other hand, even if the operating system of the information terminal has the function of recording usage information of a service, the information terminal can acquire only very limited information such as an error log since getting usage information is highly application dependent.
FIGS. 1A-1C are diagrams for explaining conventional method for acquiring usage data of an application which operates on an information terminal.
Conventionally, three methods are adopted for acquiring usage data of an application which operates on an information terminal. The three methods are a method of communication between processes, a library substitution method, and an application modification method as shown in FIGS. 1A-1C, respectively.
FIG. 1A shows the method of communication between processes. In this figure, the monitoring process 1 includes a plurality of processes. In this method, a plurality of monitoring processes carry out data communication via the operating system such that a monitoring process can get usage data of an application 2 from another monitoring process.
For example, this method is realized in a Windows operating system of Microsoft Corporation as an OLE or DDE method. When using WWW browser as an application on the Windows operating system, information such as an address of a WWW page on display can be acquired by an inquiry from an external process.
In the library substitution method shown in FIG. 1B, a library which is a set of functions called by an application 2a is replaced with a library 2aL which has a monitoring capability such that the library 2aL can get a history of function calls of the application 2a. 
For example, in the case of the Windows operating system, by replacing a standard communication library called Wsock32.dll with a communication library which has a monitoring capability and naming it the same name as Wsock32.dll, a history of calling various functions of the library from the WWW browser can be acquired.
In the application modification method shown in FIG. 1C, by using a modified application 2b, usage data of the application 2b is recorded on a usage history file 3.
However, the conventional method of communication between processes shown in FIG. 1A has a problem that the method is hard to be implemented within an application and only limited data can be acquired since recording and/or providing of a usage history of an application is not of a direct benefit to a user generally.
Moreover, in the case of the application modification method shown in FIG. 1C or the library substitution method shown in FIG. 1B, there is a problem that there is no general versatility since an application or each library needs to be modified. Further, since the application or each library needs to be redistributed in addition to the modification, the cost becomes high. Recently, in particular, since an application is frequently updated, the above problems have become more noticeable.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method and an information processing device for effectively acquiring usage data of an application on an information processing device, in which the method and the information processing device are applicable to research on an application usage trend, a measurement of an effect of Internet media, an advertising media value evaluation, and the like.
The above object of the present invention is achieved by a method for acquiring usage data of an application on an information processing device, the method including the steps of:
loading a monitoring library according to an instruction from a monitoring process when an application is launched;
obtaining event information arising from the application by the monitoring library;
sending the event information to the monitoring process;
creating usage data on the basis of the event information by the monitoring process; and
storing the usage data in a file.
According to the above invention, since event information is intercepted by the monitoring library which is inserted in the application, detailed usage information can be acquired without any modification of the application.
In the above-mentioned method, the step of getting may include the steps of:
intercepting the event information at some midpoint between the application and an operating system, or between the application and a library by the monitoring library; and
selecting at least one event among the event information and interpreting the at least one event on the basis of a predetermined process.
According to this invention, detailed usage information can be acquired by only modifying the predetermined process without any modification of the application.
In the above-mentioned method, if the monitoring process monitors a plurality of applications, at least one of the monitoring libraries may aggregate usage data arising from the applications in the monitoring process.
According to this invention, usage data of a plurality of applications can be acquired effectively.